If HB 726—the bill designed to redefine child abuse in Pennsylvania—is signed, it will be the first of more than a dozen bills expected to be signed into law that came out of the evaluation following the arrest of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 charges of abusing ten boys.

UPDATE, December 18, 2:50 p.m.: Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett signed HB 726, and nine related bills, Wednesday morning. Gov. Corbett said in a statement, “Enacting stronger child protection laws is one of those important moments when we come together and stand up for those who have suffered in silence and ensure that justice is served.”

Last summer, Sandusky was convicted of 45 charges of abusing ten boys, and the failures of Pennsylvania law were in the spotlight once again.

An analysis conducted by the Patriot-News following the verdicts concluded that the state’s child abuse laws have not been significantly updated since the 1970s. The situation was so bad that for years, Pennsylvania was the only state in the country not in compliance with federal child abuse laws. Pennsylvania was also the last state to allow young victims of abuse to testify against their abusers via video conference and to allow expert witnesses to educate juries about typical victim behavior, such as delayed reporting of abuse.

The most significant of many failures of law, though, has been the state’s narrow definition of child abuse. Under current law, advocates and legislators say, physical attacks have to result in “severe pain,” or impairment of a major bodily function or disfigurement to be classified as child abuse.

“If you intentionally took a cigarette and burned a child, that would not be child abuse [under current law],” said Rep. Scott Petri (R-Bucks), sponsor of HB 726, the bill designed to redefine child abuse in Pennsylvania.

“If you locked a child in a closet for a long period of time, that would not be child abuse because it doesn’t meet the threshold. If you have the means to feed a child, but you choose not to feed them for a substantial period of time, that is not child abuse currently,” said Petri. “All of those items would be child abuse under the new definition.”

Petri says his bill draws a “bright line” between corporal punishment and child abuse. It also contains “per se” provisions that will automatically classify sexual assault as child abuse.

Petri adds that while researching problems with current law, he spoke with pediatricians who told him that they would see the same child come to their office with broken bones and suspect abuse, but an investigation would find the report unsubstantiated. After a while, they wouldn’t report their suspicions, expecting nothing would happen.

The data supports such anecdotes. Pennsylvania has long been a “statistical outlier” in the investigation and determination of child abuse, consistently ranking lowest in the country in substantiated child abuse rates. In 2010, the substantiation rate was 1.3 per 1,000 children, while the national average was 9.2 per 1,000 children, according to the Protect Our Children Committee (POCC), a state advocacy organization.

As such, HB 726 is the bedrock of a package intended to make “sweeping” changes to Pennsylvania law. He says the governor is “anxious” to receive his bill, and expects it to be signed before year’s end.

If it is signed, it will be the first of more than a dozen bills expected to be signed into law that came out of the post-Sandusky evaluation.

The implementation date, however, is December 31, 2014. The delay concerns advocates like Cathleen Palm, longtime child advocate and co-founder of POCC.

“Are we on course for a bit of chaos?” asked Palm. “If you start to train people on the reporting provisions, and reinforce you have a responsibility to report, isn’t the definition part of how you teach people to report?”

“We want to make sure we need to give all the children and youth workers time to be educated in the bill,” Petri told RH Reality Check.

An associated bill will update which perpetrators will be classified as child abusers in Pennsylvania. (Previously, a criminal conviction did not necessarily mean classification and inclusion in the state database.)

Sara Ganim, the reporter who broke the Penn State story, noted that under old state law—that is, current Pennsylvania law, until the new legislation is implemented—even Jerry Sandusky would not necessarily be classified as a child abuser.

Rep. Petri echoes advocates when he says that the need for child abuse law reform has been obvious for many years, but it took the publicity from the Sandusky case to force attention on the issue.

The neglect may seem out-of-place in a state with so-called conservative, family-values run by a “pro-life” governor, but Petri says it reflects some of the deeply ingrained biases held by the (mostly male, white, and relatively affluent) lawmakers in Harrisburg.

“I will tell you that in the early years, when I would bring it up with some of my colleagues, you would get a response like, ‘That only happens in places like Philadelphia,’” he said.

ChildLine, Pennsylvania’s child abuse hotline, received an all-time high of 26,664 calls reporting suspected child abuse in 2012, with substantiated claims coming in from all 67 counties, according to a state report. Sexual abuse was involved in 54 percent of all substantiated claims.

Oklahoma's governor has signed into law a bill that will make getting an abortion much more difficult for teens, while in Louisiana a new bill would make it possible to charge parents with child abuse for "coercing" daughters into abortion.

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has signed into law a bill that will make accessing an abortion much more difficult for teens, even with parental consent. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, a new bill would make it possible to charge parents with child abuse for trying to “coerce” daughters out of carrying pregnancies to term.

Fallin’s signature on HB 1361 wasn’t much in doubt, based on the governor’s past support of abortion restrictions. Minors seeking an abortion in the state now must have the consent of a parent or guardian who has a valid ID and provides a signing, notarized consent form, or the minors may seek a judicial bypass, but the bill stipulates that they can only do so in the county in which they reside. If the judge in that county will not authorize the bypass, teens are left with no safe, legal option.

In Louisiana, lawmakers are considering making it a crime to “coerce” a teen into an abortion, defining such coercion as child abuse. The bill also expands the definition of coercion to include threats of “deprivation of food and shelter.”

The addition of “threats of deprivation” is reminiscent of the February case of a pregnant Texas teen whose parents were accused of trying to coerce her into an abortion by taking away her cell phone and car until she agreed to terminate the pregnancy. The teen testified that they attempted to “make her miserable so that she would give in to the coercion and have the abortion.” The parents denied the allegations, but a judge ruled that the parents must return the car to allow her to get to work and school and pay half of the hospital bills when she gave birth unless she got married in the following months.

While most people would agree that no one, including parents, should threaten a teen into an unwanted abortion, the new language could set the stage for more court challenges in which parents and their children are pitted against each other amid disagreements about what constitutes “threat of deprivation.” Meanwhile, just a short ways away in Oklahoma, a parent who wants to support the decision of a teen who wants an abortion will find it increasingly difficult to do so.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/15/oklahoma-passes-harsh-parental-consent-bill-while-louisiana-teens-can-turn-parents-in-for-abuse/feed/1Spanking Your Child: The World Disagreeshttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/11/spanking-your-child-not-something-people-agree-with-worldwide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=spanking-your-child-not-something-people-agree-with-worldwide
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/11/spanking-your-child-not-something-people-agree-with-worldwide/#commentsMon, 11 Jun 2012 21:51:32 +0000Every single country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, have agreed that spanking is wrong, at least in principle.

]]>Opinion pieces for and against corporal punishment of children cycle around with tremendous regularity. Most are based on absolutely no data, and merely offer some variation on the theme of “I was (or I wasn’t) spanked as a child, and look how well I turned out.”

Many articles inexplicably extrapolate from these hyper-personal narratives to conclude not only that “what’s good enough for me is good enough for my children,” but moreover that whatever the other camp is proposing (to spank or not to spank) is inherently bad for the child with no reference to statistics or science. Most recently, a proponent of spanking argued that not to spank your child teaches her or him that “if life isn’t fair, then throw a fit and you’ll eventually get your way.”

Full disclosure: my parents did not hit or spank me and I have never thought it necessary, desirable, or expedient to hit or spank my child. I know for a fact that she is absolutely clear that throwing a fit won’t get her anywhere. And I also know for a fact that these personal experiences cannot be translated into a theory of child psychology for larger gain.

Instead, let me try to overcome some of the dearth of information on this topic, from the perspective of desired objectives and actual outcomes.

First of all, it might come as a surprise for readers in the United States that many countries have outlawed all forms of corporal punishment of children, including spanking, slapping, other forms of hitting, as well as kicking and shaking. Countries with full bans on corporal punishment include Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, as well as Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, South Sudan, and Ukraine. (For a full list, see here).

Sweden was the first country to pass a ban on corporal punishment in 1979, and quite aside from impressive child health and education indicators, it is clear that the country has not descended into anarchy as a result of this “lack of discipline.” It is noteworthy that Sweden’s standard of living has been described by economists as “enviable,” fuelled by a “skilled labor force” (including a substantial number of workers born after the absolute spanking ban). Moreover, the economic downturn that is engulfing all of Europe is projected to be relatively short-lived in Sweden. In other words: either it pays off to be throwing fits, or else the ban on spanking does not really produce lazy, fit-throwing adults after all.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is any direct causal link between bans on corporal punishment and a country’s economy. I am, however, suggesting that hitting children (whatever you choose to call it) is not something most people agree with. And not because I wasn’t spanked myself. Rather, every single country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, have agreed that spanking is wrong, at least in principle, through ratifying the universal treaty on children’s human rights, the Convention on the Rights of Child. (South Sudan also has not ratified this treaty, but banned corporal punishment of children in 2011).

In other words, the vast majority of the world’s seven billion individuals live in countries that have, in principle, signed and ratified commitments to end violence against children in all its form, including corporal punishment in the home.

To be sure, the fact that governments from all over the world have come together to declare that spanking must stop is not going to convince those who believe in spanking as an effective method of discipline that, in fact, it is not.

To this there is only one thing to say: they are wrong.

It is a generally accepted notion that positive reinforcement brings about more lasting behavioral change than punishment both when it comes to animals and when it comes to people. A recent article in The Atlantic notes that theories on how to modify behavior through positive reinforcement form the backbone of successful programs such as Weight Watchers and AA, and provide the underlying structure of newer behavior modification applications for smart phones and computers.

Indeed, observing children around me, it seems likely that what might produce “lazy fit-throwing” adults is not lack of corporal punishment but rather lack of clarity with regard to what constitutes acceptable behaviour in the first place. There are any number of ways to communicate this clarity, and violence—including spanking—is not one of them. Consistent quality education at home and at school would be a better place to start.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/11/spanking-your-child-not-something-people-agree-with-worldwide/feed/0Wisconsin Lawmaker: If You Are Being Beaten, Just Remember the Things You Love About Your Husbandhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/23/wisconsin-lawmaker-you-are-being-beaten-just-remember-things-you-love-about-your/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wisconsin-lawmaker-you-are-being-beaten-just-remember-things-you-love-about-your
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/23/wisconsin-lawmaker-you-are-being-beaten-just-remember-things-you-love-about-your/#commentsFri, 23 Mar 2012 07:34:04 +0000

Wisconsin Rep. Don Pridemore--a co-sponsor of a bill to penalize single mothers-- helpfully suggests that, rather than divorcing an abusive spouse, you should try to remember the things you love about the guy while he is beating you up. You know... so you don't get penalized later for being single.

If you need any further proof that we are in the midst of a full-on patriarchal biblical-religious war on women, a Wisconsin lawmaker is happy to provide it.

According to Yahoo News, Wisconsin Rep. Don Pridemore helpfully suggests that, rather than divorcing an abusive spouse, you should try to remember the things you love about the guy while he is beating you up.

Instead of leaving an abusive situation, women should try to remember the things they love about their husbands, Representative Don Pridemore said. “If they can re-find those reasons and get back to why they got married in the first place it might help,” he told a local news station.

Grothman now asserts that not only is single parenthood a factor in child abuse, women in particular are to blame for it.

Basically, if you are female, Mr. Grothman and Mr. Pridemore feel you are worthless once you leave the delivery room. According to Yahoo, “while [Pridemore] thinks women are capable of caring for a family “in certain situations,” fathers are the only ones who provide structure and discipline. If they don’t grow up with married biological parents, Pridemore says, “kids tend to go astray.”

For many committed to intercountry adoption, it is unfortunate that since the year 2004 the practice has declined more than 50%. An important question is: what is happening? The answer is complex. To begin with, the unfortunate reality is that intercountry adoption has a mixed history.

Most Americans have been touched by adoption and many would agree that inter-country adoption is important and even an embodiment of our nation’s commitment to children and humanitarianism. Since World War Two, approximately one million children have been internationally adopted; leaving their country of origin and placed with adoptive families in other nations. Because US families have received at least 50 percent of these children we have been called an “Adoption Nation.” Children have arrived from a variety of countries, including Korea, Vietnam, China, Russia, Cambodia, and Guatemala. Recently, Ethiopia, with at least 5 million orphaned and vulnerable children, has become a popular source for adoptive children.

For many committed to inter-country adoption, it is unfortunate that since the year 2004 the practice has declined more than 50 percent. In sheer numbers, this means that we reached an all-time high of receiving 22,991 children that year and six years later, in 2010, we only had 11,058 children arrive in the US as international adoptees. The 2011 data indicates another decline to 9320 children sent to the US as adoptees.

An important question is: what is happening? The answer is complex. To begin with, the unfortunate reality is that inter-country adoption has a mixed history. On the positive side: many children have impressive developmental gains once they begin living in a family setting rather than a child care institution. Also, medical problems are may be addressed in the US and some children receive life altering if not lifesaving medical care. Overcoming disability and extreme deprivation is one part of the inter-country adoption story.

Even with so much good, there has been a dark side to adoption. It is a practice which has more than its fair share of scandals. The 2010 case of the young boy sent back to Russia unaccompanied with nothing more than a note requesting adoption “annulment” is a good example. Then, there was the Russian girl named Masha Allen who was adopted by a pedophile and he proceeded to sell her sexual abuse photo images into Internet pornography. Her case was eventually heard before US Congress when Masha testified about the abuse and asked “why didn’t anyone come to check on me?” Her question is a direct one for the adoption ‘professionals’ who handled her case. When you look deeper, those involved were anything but professional in practices. They flagrantly disregarded their responsibilty to investigate the adoption placement to determine if it was appropriate and then, in follow-up visits with Masha, to verify her health and safety.

Other problematic history includes allegations of child abduction. It is hard to forget that during the 2010 aftermath of the Haitian earthquake that a faith or mission group from Idaho attempted to illegally remove or traffic children into the Dominican Republic for the purpose of inter-country adoption. International press eventually identified that most of the children were not ‘orphans’ and their families believed that the children would be cared for and that their families would be able to visit with them and retain relations. When you think about it, families living in extreme poverty could so easily be led to believe such a thing and in a moment of desperation and hope. Allowing your child to leave with a stranger from the U.S. who promises of food and an education may be the only sense of salvation in the moment of disaster chaos. The desperate act eventually plays out as a decision made in haste and with a misrepresentation of intent. Legally such a scenario it fits international child abduction definitions when poor families are unable to retrieve children and then the children enter into adoption schemes.

There have been cases like Cambodia where an American adoption ‘facilitator’ orchestrated child ‘adoptions.’ Rural and mainly illiterate Cambodian families were often given a small sum of money and a bag of rice in exchange for their signature on critical legal documents. Again, these children were not orphans but they were desirable children—relatively young and healthy children who were easily matched with eager US families willing to pay $20,000 or more for the adoption. Investigators found that some of these Cambodian families were led to believe that their children were going to boarding schools overseas. The facilitator was eventually arrested by U.S. Federal Marshalls and she served time in prison for tax evasion, among other charges. Before she was stopped, she earned millions of dollars with her child trafficking scheme and U.S. families were devastated to learn that their children were not orphans.

More recently, the most notorious adoption nation with profound problems has been Guatemala. Approximately 30,000 children departed as inter-country adoptees from 1999-2007. Human rights defenders agree that abuses within this system were profound and while there were legitimate adoptions, there were also an unknown number of adoptions with serious irregularities and illegalities. Problems ranged from birth mother payments to induce adoption arrangements to actual child abduction for adoption. Recently, UN investigators found patterns of organized crime and the highest profile adoption attorney in Guatemala is now serving a 26-year prison sentence. She is linked to a range of problematic cases, including high profile child abduction cases.

Sadly there are three mothers in Guatemala who have taken to hunger protests for their individual daughters return from the U.S. One of those three women now has a Guatemalan court order for her daughter’s repatriation as a victim of abduction. The U.S. family in question, living in Missouri, has thus far ignored the court order with the exception of making a nationally-televised statement that they do not believe such a return to be in the best interests of their daughter. A resulting debate is brewing about rights, responsibilities, and the best interests of the child. No doubt it is difficult to remove a child from a family with which she has lived with for more than three years. In the long run, it may be even more difficult for the U.S. family to one day justify how they became complicit in abduction by ignoring a desperate mother’s search and a Guatemalan court order.

At the end of the day, Interpol has reportedly been contacted and our diplomats have no choice but to get involved because as a nation we have signed the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption. This international private law is implemented in the US with the year 2000 Inter-country Adoption Act which requires the US Department of State’s involvement in matters of child sales and abduction under the guise of inter-country adoption. To date, a resolution on this particular abduction case has been fleeting. Internationally recognized Guatemalan human rights defender, Norma Cruz advocates on behalf of this and other cases. Cruz reminds us that child abduction is the cruelest violence of all against a woman as it brings about “eternal suffering.” She has dedicated considerable time and resources to bring a resolution to this case and she reports that she will not rest until justice is served.

While we await resolution on these Guatemalan cases, we are ultimately left with an unfortunate history of inter-country adoption scandals which has led to the decline in the practice. Russian adoptions have slowed down considerably and a moratorium on Cambodian and Guatemalan adoptions is now in place. This is also true for Vietnamese adoptions as that country too has a history of fraud related to questionable child abandonment. Other countries such as China have slowed down considerably due to a variety of factors. And, while Ethiopia has taken off as an adoption nation, there are indications of serious problems in that nation too. In sum, the decline is significant and families who have hoped to adopt internationally are left an uncertain future. And, at the end of the day, this is unfortunate for all who stand to gain from family building via ethical inter-country adoption.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/18/intercountry-adoption-steep-declines-in-the-us/feed/0A Catholic Bishop Is Indicted in Child Pornography and Again I Ask: Why Does Congress Kowtow to the USCCB?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/16/a-catholic-bishop-is-indicted-in-child-pornography-and-again-i-ask-why-does-congress-kowtow-to-the-usccb/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-catholic-bishop-is-indicted-in-child-pornography-and-again-i-ask-why-does-congress-kowtow-to-the-usccb
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/16/a-catholic-bishop-is-indicted-in-child-pornography-and-again-i-ask-why-does-congress-kowtow-to-the-usccb/#commentsSun, 16 Oct 2011 20:09:11 +0000Almost exactly two years ago, during the heat of the health reform debate, I wrote an article asking why the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has so much power in the halls of Congress, especially when it comes to pushing for policies that deny women their rights. Today, I ask again: Why?

]]>Almost exactly two years ago, during the heat of the health reform debate, I wrote an article asking why the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has so much power in the halls of Congress, especially when it comes to pushing for policies that deny women their rights.

This is, according to the New York Times, “the first time in the 25-year history of the church’s sex abuse scandals that the leader of an American diocese has been held criminally liable for the behavior of a priest he supervised.”

The indictment of the bishop, Robert W. Finn, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by a county grand jury was announced on Friday. Each was charged with one misdemeanor count involving a priest accused of taking pornographic photographs of girls as recently as this year. They pleaded not guilty.

According to the Times, the bishops pledged a decade ago to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities. And “Bishop Finn himself had made such a promise three years ago as part of a $10 million legal settlement with abuse victims in Kansas City.”

Instead he continued to cover up this abuse.

Bishop Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May. During that time, the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, is said to have continued to attend church events with children, and took lewd photographs of another young girl.

Taking lewd photographs of young girls and covering it up. Raping young boys and girls and covering it up. Getting women pregnant and covering it up.

There is a sustained pattern of institutionalized corruption and immorality by any measure and these men are allowed to declare themselves the moral arbiters of the most private decisions made by women and their families?

In another article in Rolling Stone last month, Sabrina Rubin Erdeley wrote about the Bishop’s secret sex crime files, a long pattern of abuse and cover-up that left serial abusers to roam among parish children and continue to rape and abuse them.

In the New Yorker, in April of last year, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote that the church’s “institutional indulgence… of the sexual exploitation of children by priests” has resulted in both civil and criminal cases “involving many thousands of children and leading to legal settlements that have amounted to more than two billion dollars and have driven several dioceses into bankruptcy.”

In 1992, Richard Sipe, a Catholic psychotherapist and researcher who served for eighteen years as a priest and Benedictine monk, told a conference of victims that “the current revelations of abuse are the tip of an iceberg, and if the problem is traced to its foundations the path will lead to the highest halls of the Vatican.”

This is not about religion. This is not about morality according to any definition I understand it.

This is about systemic abuse covered up and excused. This is about abuse of the public trust and the trust of children. This is about the gross manipulation and abuse of power. This is about institutionalized misogyny. This is about the USCCB and others covering themselves by sending abusive priests to new parishes here and abroad to perpetrate more abuses on unsuspecting children and parents. Patterns of abuse that make your hair stand on end. Countless lives ruined.

And these men walk the halls of Congress making laws about our bodies and lecturing to us about “life?”

I simply want to know why it is that this institution is allowed to lobby, with fully tax-exempt status. Why is it given legitimacy–as no such organization should–as a supposed moral arbiter of the rights of women and girls, and of gay, lesbian and transgender persons, of social mores, when clearly it is so deeply morally corrupted.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/16/a-catholic-bishop-is-indicted-in-child-pornography-and-again-i-ask-why-does-congress-kowtow-to-the-usccb/feed/2Catholics Still Waiting for Justice in Sex Abuse Scandalhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/06/24/catholics-still-waiting-justice-abuse-scandal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=catholics-still-waiting-justice-abuse-scandal
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/06/24/catholics-still-waiting-justice-abuse-scandal/#commentsFri, 24 Jun 2011 13:21:49 +0000There may have been an official change in policy regarding clergy sex abuse, but practice and culture appear to be lagging. In practice, the leadership of the Catholic Church has plenty of tolerance for the sexual abuse of children.

Thousands of Catholic clergy and religious have raped and sodomized tens of thousands of children—perhaps more than 100,000 children—since 1950.

The website makes available a formidable archive of documents relating to the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church—letters and memoranda from priests, bishops, parishioners, and the Vatican dating back as far as the 1940s, and survivor affidavits from more recently.

BishopAccountability.org was founded in 2003 as it became clear that sexual abuse in the Church was truly an epidemic, and one that became as insidious and widespread as it did through the routine inaction and concealment of bishops. The project’s staff explains their mission as follows (in part):

It is our hope that the information we are collecting at BishopAccountability.org will help expose bishops who have abused children or vulnerable adults, or have aided abusers. We hope we can encourage an informed public to demand indictments of bishops where appropriate. And failing these legal remedies, we hope that our Web site will embolden priests and laity to beg the removal of culpable bishops by the Pope.

Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to uphold its policy on sex abuse, called the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, to the dismay of BishopAccountability.org. The Charter is good, in theory: its zero-tolerance policy requires the removal of a priest after a single, substantiated accusation of abuse.

In practice, however, the leadership of the Catholic Church has plenty of tolerance for the sexual abuse of children. Though the revelations of abuse—and, perhaps more disturbingly, the degree of negligence and duplicity of bishops—prompted the USCCB to adopt the zero-tolerance policy in 2002, they don’t seem to have changed their ways.

Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane claims that the 2002 policy “involved not only a change in practice and policy, but I think culture as well, and so we are going to be reluctant to back off this commitment in any way to make any changes.”

There may have been a change in policy, but practice and culture appear to be lagging. As Laurie Goodstein reported in the Times in advance of the USCCB Assembly, a bishop in Kansas City is still covering up abuse, and Archbishop Justin Rigali of Philadelphia allowed 37 accused priests to remain active in the ministry. (Goodstein’s article, which claimed that Rigali reported none of the cases to a review board, was corrected to reflect that the bishop had reported 10 of the 37 allegations. Great work, Rigali.)

Prudent judgments made by thoughtful Catholics can lead to different legitimate approaches to solving the problems of poverty, immigration, healthcare and acceptable military force. Some issues, however, because they lie at the foundation of society and address fundamental aspects of what it means to be human, must be considered first and foremost. . . .As Catholics we revere life and find the destruction of innocent human life abhorrent.

I’m trying to understand why Cardinal Rigali would allow the children of his diocese, who certainly qualify as innocent human life forms, to be under the care and tutelage of abusive priests. He must think sexual abuse is not that big of a deal. Not as big as stem-cell research, for example.

I’ve long given up hope of seeing what I want to see in the Church hierarchy: a genuine expression of remorse and sorrow about sexual abuse; an acknowledgement of how deeply they’ve damaged an entire generation of Catholics. Instead, at last week’s conference, the bishops went back on the offensive as quickly as possible, hearing “updates on their multimedia campaign against same-sex marriage,” with the Archbishop of Baltimore bemoaning the turning tides:

“It seems like almost overnight we’ve lost the young adult community on this, including Catholics,” said Archbishop O’Brien, adding that young people had been misled to believe that gay marriage is a civil rights issue.

The chairman of the bishops’ committee on the defense of marriage defended heterosexual marriage as follows:

“Children are the most vulnerable in society . . . and children need a mother and a father.”

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/06/24/catholics-still-waiting-justice-abuse-scandal/feed/1HuffPo’s Divorce Section: No Room for Reason on Domestic Violence?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/17/huffpos-divorce-section-room-reason-domestic-violence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=huffpos-divorce-section-room-reason-domestic-violence
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/17/huffpos-divorce-section-room-reason-domestic-violence/#commentsWed, 17 Nov 2010 07:21:11 +0000HuffPo's new divorce section features articles by an author whose work is widely rejected by professionals in the medical, psychological and domestic violence communities. Why do they censor comments on his posts?

]]>The Huffington Post, in an effort to beef up its divorce section, is featuring controversial psychologist and author, Richard Warshak. In his first column “Stop Divorce Poison,” Warshak speaks of the equally controversial topic of parental alienation (PA); he or HuffPo have censored comments made by domestic violence advocates and survivors, and many of the remaining comments espouse misinformation, stereotypes, and sexist remarks.

Why should this concern women and those in the reproductive rights community?

“Parent Alienation,” the idea that one parent (typically the mother) poisons the mind of the child against the other parent, is dangerous because it casts doubt on mothers’ claims of child abuse; the more she tries to protect her child and gather evidence, the more she exhibits “parental alienation.” If she fails–and she’ll face an uphill battle fighting bias, paying exhorborant fees, and fearing for her child(ren)’s safety trying to succeed–she can be fined, jailed and/or she could lose custody. PAS can and has turned the table on women trying to protect themselves or their child(ren) from abuse. (Several cases that have received media attention can be found here, here, and here.

We fight for rights during pregnancy; we can’t leave women in the dust after they deliver. Villifying a protective mother, jailing her or taking her offspring is the worse you can do to a woman – abusers understand this, it’s time we do, too.

Warshak and the idea of PA

Warshak starts off with, “Mother Theresa does not marry Saddam Hussein.” But then we would have to ask, what was Hussein’s wife like?, because Warshak is making a comparison between spouses. Perhaps she was no Mother Theresa, but surely she wasn’t as evil as Saddam. Already we have an imbalance. All human beings can exhibit evil or wrong-doing, but not all humans are equal in this respect, as Warshak wants us to believe. Some are worse than others. And while women are far from perfect, many women in abusive relationships fall in love with a guy only to find out months or years later that he is abusive. Abusers, unfortunately, don’t come with a sign on their forehead.

Warshak then explains that parents who alienate their child(ren) cannot “harness the emotions unleashed by divorce and they exhibit “rage,” “enlist children as allies,” and use “bad-mouthing, lies, exaggerations…,” which Warshak likens to political mud-slinging campaigns. Some parents may deliberately or inadvertently denigrate the other parent. This may be evident in their parenting skills, but the main problem with PA is that it’s indistinguishable from the fear that comes from an abusive situation and can harm protective parents while rewarding abusive ones.

Jay Silverman’s study at Harvard, as reported in Newsweek, found 54 percent of custody cases were in favor of the batterer and nearly every case used parental alienation to counter the claims of abuse.

Warshak’s belief that “abused children cling tightly to their abuser” must explain why he seeks to reunite children with potential abusers then. Warshak runs a “treatment facility” in Texas that, for the whopping price tag of $40,000, reunites child(ren), at times forcibly, with the denigrated parent. I’ve included a link to a case in Canada, where an alienated mother, who had the financial resources, sought to reunify with her sons at his center. Note Warshak never actually met the sons but called it alienation nonetheless.

Domestic violence advocates and censorship

The domestic violence community, along with many major medical and psychological associations, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, rejects PA as a legitimate diagnosis. At least eight of us, representing domestic violence advocates and survivors, tried to post comments on Warshak’s article explaining our position. While a few posts remained, most, in our supposition, were deleted because they disagreed with the author. One advocate was banned. Apparently, this is not the first time people have complained about the comment section of the Huffington Post.

Nearly all the comments were citations to research, quotes and other factual information, including how PAS does not meet the standard of scientific reliability, about Warshak’s reunification center and its $40,000 price tag, and quotes from experts in the field, among other comments calling into question his analysis.

I included this quote from Dr. Paul Fink, President of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence and a former President of the Amercian Psychiatric Association:

“PAS is junk science at its worst…Science tells us that the most likely reason that a child becomes estranged from a parent is that parent’s own behavior. Labels, such as PAS, serve to deflect attention away from those behaviors.”

Mothers have informed us that when they make a good faith allegation, it is they who are doubted (see, for instance, cases such as those of Katie Tagle, where the judge called her a liar, gave the ex custody, and her baby was murdered by its father; or Amy Castillo, another woman who was denied a protective order and lost three children when her ex-husband drowned them in a hotel bathtub) and labeled abusive or ordered to undergo a polygraph test or psychiatric evaluation. The stereotype that women lie to gain the upperhand in custody cases, which occurs in only a fraction of cases, has more branding power than do mere facts. According to research, men in cases where both abuse and custody are in question actually make more false claims, according to research. The American Bar Association provides further information on custody myths.

Poisonous comments

Many of us understand the origins of PA are rooted in the misogynist and pro-pedophilia attitudes of Dr. Richard Gardner, who thought the mass sexual-abuse hysteria was caused by vindictive women falsely accusing fathers of abuse. (8) In reality, many protective parents feel as if this were a witchhunt against them — mothers are not trusted, they’ve cast a spell on the kids to hate Dad –they must be punished! Jail them! Fine them! Take away their children! Like the “witches” of long past who would either sink or swim, mothers are in a similar bind – if they report abuse, they’re punished for being an alienator; if they don’t report it, they can be punished for failure to report.

Meanwhile, many of the alienating behaviors readers commented on can be attributed to personalities, parenting skills, or, in cases of abuse, domestic violence by proxy, whereby one parent continues to exert control and/or abuse over another. One advocate keeps a blog of parents that kill their child(ren) in cases pertaining to divorce and custody. She’s up to 136. Despite the fact that these marriages ended, the domestic violence continues and these deaths would be classified as domestic violence fatalities.Overwhelmingly, these killings are committed by men – with no tango partner, Mr. Warshak. In other words, party of one.

You can tell from the comment section how much these guys like women. If they got together, I can just imagine them in a big smokey room with leather chairs giving each other the wink and nod about the comment pertaining to Mother Theresa and Saddam Hussein. The idea of ‘equality with a vengeance’ comes to mind.

One poster, Target NoMore, refers to those opposing PA as a ‘special interest group’ that doesn’t want to stop the problem. People who want to protect children are not “special interest groups.”

If HuffPo is going to feature controversial authors whose work is not only rejected by the scientific community but also puts children at risk, why not at least allow evidence to be introduced in the comments section? What are they afraid of?

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/17/huffpos-divorce-section-room-reason-domestic-violence/feed/136Paying Drug-Addicted Women To Get Sterilized: Choice or Coercion?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/03/paying-drugaddicted-women-sterilized/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=paying-drugaddicted-women-sterilized
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/03/paying-drugaddicted-women-sterilized/#commentsWed, 03 Nov 2010 08:33:30 +0000Project Prevention pays low-income, drug-addicted women to get sterilized or use a long-term form of contraception. Is it coercion or simply "reproductive choice?"

The founder of a controversial program that pays drug-addicted women to get sterilized or use a long-term method of birth control, is the subject of a recent New York Post article, with the TV talk-show title, “Why I took $300 to be sterilized.”

However, as the New York Post reports this weekend, Harris continues her quest to ensure that women who are addicted to drugs become permanently unable to procreate, with plans to extend her program to Africa to pay HIV positive women in Kenya $40 to have an IUD implanted.

Many wonder, lacking appropriate and accessible public health remedies, is this the best we can do?

First some background from my personal experience. In 2003, C.R.A.C.K. began “advertising” via photocopied flyers stapled to telephone poles in the area of Seattle where I worked, at the time. As an employee of a women’s health center, located next to a methadone clinic, C.R.A.C.K. clearly honed in on a location they knew low-income, drug-addicted women congregated.

Their sheets of paper, printed with graying ink, sometimes wet from the ongoing light rain that falls during our Seattle winters, told women they’d be eligible to receive $300 for agreeing to be sterilized or a bit less money for accepting a longer term form of contraception such as Depo-Provera (at the time). A web site for the project (no longer live), noted in the “Do’s and Don’t of Pamphleteering” section, that AA and NA meeting places were appropriate sites for hanging pamphlets. C.R.A.C.K. (aka Project Prevention) obviously also targeted recovering addicts for their “project.” When I first noticed the flyers, I brought the issue to my employer since some of our abortion clients were known to also be clients of the methadone clinic next door. The challenge, of course, was that some of these women were certain to visit us for Depo-Provera, after accepting the cash from C.R.A.C.K. or Project Prevention. What were we to do?

Ultimately, after an in-depth discussion, many meetings with fellow race-based organizations and a report written about the group, by an employee of a group called CARA (Communities Against Rape and Abuse), we decided that our options, in this scenario, were to simply continue to offer these clients support or referrals for other assistance if they wanted to get help for their addiction or wanted more information about their health care and, as is the case with any woman’s decision to access safe and legal health care including contraception, offer access as well.

The larger issue, of course, is what sort of “help” paying low-income, drug-addicted women to get sterilized truly constitutes. And, Paltrow and others argue, Project Prevention may be more than just ineffectual on a larger scale, it’s harmful as well.

Project Prevention was founded back in 1997, notes Judith Scully in “Cracking Open C.R.A.C.K.: Unethical Sterilization Movement Gains Momentum,” writing for the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, when it used billboards (“Don’t Let a Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit” and “If You Are Addicted to Drugs – Get Birth Control – Get $200 Cash”) to reel women in. But the group advertised (and still advertises) in low-income neighborhoods, bringing in proportionally many more African-American women than Caucasian women. Though the New York Post article (and the organization’s own web site) attempts to counter critics’ claim that the group is racist, with statistics – since its inception, 1,822 Caucasians and 944 African-Americans have “used Project Prevention’s services” – considering the fact that African Americans make up only 13.5% of the total U.S. population, this hardly seems like a color-blind program.

The article paints Harris as a concerned, compassionate woman who says she adopted four children all from the same, drug-addicted mother, years ago. It’s hard to argue that Harris is not concerned or passionate about her cause – and motherhood, especially when it comes to the children she’s raised. As well, given the realities of a public health system where drug and alcohol abusers find it to difficult to access help when they need it; a national foster care system in need of greater attention; and child abuse costs rising to over $100 billion/year, some argue that Harris is making a positive impact, for very little investment.

In a New York Times article about the group, in 1999, Steve Trombley, the CEO of Chicago Planned Parenthood said, “It’s simply a bribe for sterilization…” It’s hardly a leap to consider, Paltrow notes, “dangling” $200 or $300 in front of a drug-addicted, poor woman to get sterilized, coercive.

While the article quotes a couple of women who desperately express gratitude to Harris and her program for keeping them from having any more children, while addicted to drugs, the women don’t seem certain about much else. In fact, one woman in the story – Kelly – credits the program with ensuring that she doesn’t give birth while drug-addicted ever again. She says, “Babies and drugs don’t mix. My kids are the ones who pay for my partying, and I didn’t want to do that to another one. I love them, they are everything to me – I don’t want to smoke their lives away,” Kelly has been reuinted with her two year old daughter and cannot say for certain whether she’ll end up staying off for drugs. Harris’ program does not address her needs – or her daughters’, in this regard, at all.

Paltrow’s examination and analysis of the program including her questions about the lack of the group’s ability to address drug addiction, unwanted pregnancies, child welfare and public health – should throw the overall impact of Harris’ organization into question. As Paltrow notes, “This examination makes clear that “far from providing a useful response to problems associated with drug use and pregnancy, C.R.A.C.K. instead acts as a dangerous vector for medical misinformation and political propaganda that has significant implications for the rights of all Americans.”

The New York Post article quotes an obstetrician who works with drug-addicted, pregnant women in North Carolina who calls the cash incentives “bribery” and urges people to consider that drug-addicted women need treatment – not money for sterilization. As well, he says, this type of a program focuses on control over empowerment, despite the propaganda pushed by the organization.

When Harris first envisioned “helping” drug-addicted women and their future babies, she attempted to take a legislative route. She reached out to an Assemblyman in California (where she lives), Phil Hawkins, who agreed to sponsor legislation making it a crime to give birth to a drug-addicted baby. Titled the “Prenatal Neglect Act,” the bill proposed creating a crime of “prenatal child neglect.” Ultimately, Harris and her organization “revised” the history to note that, after adopting four of her children from one drug-addicted mother, she attempted to get a bill passed “that would have made it mandatory that after giving birth to a drug addicted baby the birth mother use long-term birth control.”

Harris told RH Reality Check that she was contacted by a male student in Kenya who “begged her” to come to the country to offer HIV positive women long-term birth control. If Project Prevention expands its reach to target HIV positive women, in Kenya, innumerable questions arise, once again. While there is a risk of transmission of HIV between an infected mother and her fetus, the risk is nearly diminished completely when anti-retroviral treament (ART) is used in pregnancy and labor and the woman does not breastfeed. When there are so many millions infected with HIV, globally, including pregnant women, the focus should be on ensuring that those who need treatment, receive treatment; and that those who are at greatest risk of being infected, before pregnancy occurs, are able to protect themselves. To pay an HIV positive woman, in Kenya, $40 to be implanted with an IUD is short-sighted at best and retains the focus on the woman as a “broken” vessel rather than on a broken system in need of fixing.

This is not about the woman – in any of these scenarios. This is about the lower-income woman’s body as a vessel. Ignoring a woman’s struggle with drug-addiction; targeting low-income women who use “street” drugs (the organization started out with the name C.R.A.C.K.!) for the impact said drugs may have on a newborn, when in fact the consequences of abusing alcohol while pregnant are much greater in terms of the impact on newborn health; and focusing on preventing HIV positive women in Africa from having children instead of on what we can do, globally, to prevent HIV transmission and infection, do little to actually help mend a system which penalizes women and their children. And lest one think Project Prevention is simply a voluntary, reproductive health service program along the lines of Planned Parenthood, for instance – using an “empowerment” and “free will” model – the coercive and dehumanizing tactics, says Paltrow, do not bear those ideas out. Harris has compared the women she serves to animals saying “They’re having litters. They are literally having litters.” Paltrow writes,

“Unlike privately funded family planning organizations, C.R.A.C.K. does not focus on the numerous barriers to reproductive health that exist in the U.S., but rather on the harm that women allegedly do to their children and the cost to society of their supposed irresponsibility. It emphasizes the value of controlling their reproduction as a solution to complex public health and economic problems. Instead of providing support for much-needed reproductive health services, outreach, or education, it uses its funds to reward or motivate certain women to be sterilized or use particular forms of birth control, at public expense. As Judith M. Scully argues, “[d]espite its benevolent name, C.R.A.C.K.’s primary goal is to promote population control…”

Indeed, statements by C.R.A.C.K.’s founder and Director Barbara Harris not only provide clear examples of negative stereotyping, they also make clear that control, not empowerment, is in fact C.R.A.C.K.’s primary purpose. As one commentary quoting Ms. Harris observed, “[a]ddict, recovering addict, dirty, clean . . .whatever. The distinction hardly matters to C.R.A.C.K. (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), the group that gave [the client] the money. ‘As long as they stay on birth control,’ says founder Barbara Harris, ‘[t]hat’s all we care about.’”

Finally, and by no means of least importance, Paltrow reminds us that targeting “narrowly defined segments of the population” for sterilization or long term birth control is frighteningly “reminiscent of several tragic chapters of recent history.”

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/11/03/paying-drugaddicted-women-sterilized/feed/33Does Refusing a C-Section = Child Abuse?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/08/13/refusingcsection-child-abuse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=refusingcsection-child-abuse
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/08/13/refusingcsection-child-abuse/#commentsFri, 13 Aug 2010 06:00:00 +0000A woman comes into a hospital, in labor, refuses to pre-consent to a c-section, and has her baby whisked away under charges of child neglect?

]]>Is it willful ignorance? A lack of education? Or some sort of untouchable mysticism that surrounds that which we all share and though rarely speak of?

I’m talking about childbirth and the endless misunderstandings and misinformation that go along with birth – especially in this culture. From what women experience emotionally and physiologically during labor to what women’s legal and ethical rights look like during the same period, the impact of not only our ignorance about birth but our desire to control what we don’t know or don’t understand, serves no one.

Case in point.

The National Association for Pregnant Women (NAPW) recently acknowledged a victory in which they played a part related to a woman who had given birth three years ago and had her newborn swiftly whisked away by a child protective authority claiming child endangerment for refusing to “pre-authorize” a cesarean section. The victory came in the form of a court decision last week reversing a lower court’s decision to terminate the mother’s parental rights (Ms.M aka V.M.) and remove the baby from her custody at birth, because she didn’t consent to a c-section, even though it was never medically necessary. According to NAPW staff attorney Farah Diaz-Tello, the issue of whether refusal of a cesarean section can be fashioned as medical neglect of a child was essentially “put to bed” in an opinion by the Appellate Division last year. However, Judge Carchman, writing in this recent decision confirms that the refusal to consent to a c-section has “no place” in the proceedings, stating that the term “child/ren” does not extend to fetuses for the purposes of the abuse/neglect statute under which Ms. M’s parental rights were terminated.

According to NAPW,

Even though Ms. M delivered a healthy baby vaginally, and would have consented to a cesarean if it ever became necessary [emphasis added], this resulted in a child welfare investigation, the state’s decision to remove the child from her parent’s custody at birth, and termination of parental rights. In the decision published today (PDF), the Appellate Division reversed the lower court’s termination of Ms. M’s parental rights and ruled that the child protective authority had failed to meet its burden of showing that Ms. M was “unwilling or unable to eliminate the harm facing the child” and that “termination of parental rights will not do more harm than good.”

Ms. M entered St. Barnabas Hospital in New Jersey, in 2006, after experiencing contractions. She was immediately asked to sign consent forms for “the administration of intravenous fluids, antibiotics, oxygen, fetal heart rate monitoring, an episiotomy and an epidural anesthetic” but she refused to essentially pre-consent to “any other invasive treatment.” Kathrine Jack, staff attorney with NAPW involved in the case from the beginning, told RH Reality Check,

“This occurred in a New Jersey hospital that has a 50 percent c-section rate. The hospital policy is that whenever a maternity patient comes in the door, they immediately are asked to pre-authorize any intervention. It’s standard practice and it’s not uncommon.”

Jack’s colleague, Farah Diaz-Tello, a fellow NAPW attorney continued,

“A lot of hospitals have these. From a legal perspective, however, they are questionable. Can you have informed consent, pro-forma?”

It’s an excellent question and it’s precisely in a case like this where that idea gets tested. Can a woman exercise informed consent to a medical intervention during labor if the situation under which she may consent to the intervention hasn’t happened yet? This hospital has a c-section rate that is well above what the World Health Organization deems a safe c-section rate; if women are consenting to a c-section right off the bat (not to mention fetal heart-rate monitoring, antibiotics, episiotomies, and epidurals!) regardless of whether one is actually medically indicated, it’s certainly blurring the lines between what’s medically necessary and the power of suggestion from a medical “authority.” Where does an individual’s right to make an informed choice begin and hospital legal policy end?

Ms. M had a history of psychiatric issues, having been on a range of medication including Zoloft and Prozac and in psychotherapy prior to her pregnancy. Not unlike millions of Americans, she suffered from what was characterized at different times in the court decision as depression, a panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder. She went off her medication during her pregnancy for fear of its effect on her fetus. Prior to coming to the hospital to give birth, there was no indication that she was a danger to herself or to others. V.M. sought prenatal care, according to the records, from Dr. Ted Stevens, an ob-gyn.

This all changed, according to the lower court ruling, during her labor. Ms. M suddenly became a danger to her as-of-yet unborn child when she a) refused to consent, before it was necessary, to a c-section and b) became, what was referred to in the court decision as “combative.”

According to the decision,

“In the hospital records, V.M. is described as “combative,” “uncooperative,” “erratic,” “non-compliant,” “irrational” and “inappropriate.” She ordered the attending obstetrician, Dr. Shetal Mansuria, to leave the room and told her if she did not do what V.M. said, she would be off the case. V.M. then threatened to report the doctor to the police. In fact, at one point V.M. did call the Livingston Police to report that she was being abused and denied treatment. She told a nurse that “no one is going to touch my baby.”

As Diaz-Tello told RH Reality Check, when asked about what kind of “combative behavior” Ms. M/V.M. displayed during and immediately after birth,

“The ‘combative behavior’ was in relation to things that happened after the delivery…you have to see them in the context of when they told her they were taking her baby away.”

Her “combative” and “non-compliant” actions, then, were in response to being told by the hospital that the baby she had just given birth to would be taken from her. The decision states:

She would not allow Dr. Mansuria to touch the baby or perform an ultrasound examination. . . . V.M. “was very boisterous and yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs.”

Is this potentially what the in the first court, ruling against Ms. M, also meant by “uncooperative”, “erratic” and “irrational”? Well, that pretty well describes many women’s behavior during birth but most especially for women who may not abide by what a doctor’s and others’ vision is for her labor and delivery. In fact, notes NAPW,

“…the court itself cites a clinician’s opinion that “it is not surprising that she panicked at the time of delivery . . . [after] being approached about the possibility of a Cesarean section” given her particular emotional vulnerability.”

Ms. M had been evaluated by a psychiatrist because of her refusal to consent to a c-section (“She thrashed about to the extent that it was unsafe…to administer an epidural”); and because, from the record, she was “very boisterous…yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs.” The psychiatrist spoke with her for an hour to make sure she understood the risks and complications of having a c-section or refusing one; Ms. M was honest about her psychiatric history, according to the notes, and was clear about her choice. The psychiatrist concluded that:

“…V.M. (Ms. M) was not psychotic and had the capacity for informed consent with regard to the c-section.”

Not only did the psychiatrist find she had the capacity for informed consent and therefore was capable of saying no to the surgery but mental health, says Diaz-Tello, is not a reason in and of itself for taking a child away from her or his parents.

Despite the psychiatrist’s finding, however, and despite having no apparent legal basis, the initial decision to remove the newborn from Ms. M’s and her husband’s care was specifically related to her decision not to pre-authorize a cesarean section. An amicus brief, filed on behalf of more than 20 organizations and experts including many individual physicians called the lower court’s decision an “injustice and misuse of the child welfare laws” and notes:

“The record is clear that hospital staff referred V.M.’s case to the Division of Youth and Family Services (“the Division” or “DY FS”) at least in part because of concerns regarding V.M.’s decisions during labor, including her decision not to preauthorize consent to cesarean surgery.”

Unfortunately, the lower court also relied entirely on hearsay evidence to keep Ms. M, her husband, and their baby apart for three years. The series of events were recounted in court, seemingly, to highlight her “combative” and “erratic” behavior without giving rise to the real reasons behind her actions. Jack explains:

“None of the people who were present during her labor and delivery actually testified to anything. The only evidence was the testimony of the child welfare case worker testifying about what the people in the hospital told her after the fact. For example, the evidence of combative behavior is pretty subjective and it was the care providers giving information to a case worker who gave it to the lower court judge…it was a hearsay problem. They may have conflated her adamant refusal [to consent to a c-section] at the time with her anger afterwards and wanting to call the police [after they said they were taking her baby from her].”

It’s not just the fact that the plaintiff (the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services) relied on hearsay evidence to prop up its position and ultimately ensure a newborn was separated from her parents but that there seemed to be no legal basis for the decision. According to the amicus brief, not only is the right to refuse consent of a c-section constitutionally protected but the New Jersey statute (N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.1(a)) used by the court to terminate Ms. M’s parental rights does not pertain to pregnant women. From the amicus brief,

“…family court judges may not consider pregnant women’s medical decisions in terminating parental rights” because, says the amicus brief, “that law does not apply to pregnant women or their fetuses.”

What would the fall-out have been, therefore, had the Superior Court of NJ not ruled in the mother’s favor, last week?

“Our thought in taking this case was to prevent a precedent that would allow for the consideration of a woman’s decision-making process during labor or about labor to have any place at all in neglect or termination of parental rights,” says Jack of NAPW.

Diaz-Tello goes on,

“…the concern that this would be used as precedent to force women to have c-sections was taken care of at the Appellate level last year. What made this case a continuing problem was the “other factors” were all either precipitated by or discovered as a result of the refusal. The current case doesn’t resolve that problem, but at least it directly states in the majority opinion that the refusal of the cesarean had “no place” in the termination proceeding.The reason we stayed with the case, is that her refusal [to consent to a c-section] opened up a fishing expedition because of the nature of the child welfare proceeding. Once the door is open you can have field day with every aspect of a woman’s life – that even though they can’t technically use that as the finding, they can use it in some capacity…”

It’s certainly a valid concern given how women’s choices are judged and then used as reasons to deny us our rights. From the cases of women who have given birth to stillborn babies being convicted of homicide because of a history of drug-use while pregnant, to women who are raped only to see their own sexual history used against them in court, courts have used personal biases and pre-conceived notions of how society believes women should behave to justify legal decisions with profound and very real consequences.

For Ms. M, her husband and their now three-year old child, however, the story isn’t over.

With this recent victory, the case has hit a happier note but there is a possibility that the NJ Department of Youth and Family Services will repeal the Appellate court decision; they have thirty days to do so. If they don’t appeal, says Jack, the case goes back to the lower court which will hopefully take steps towards reuniting the family. But because they have been separated so long, says Diaz-Tello, this is certain to be a long process.